In the news

Back Issues 16.04.03

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Clive Limpkin, right, of The Sun received the Robert Capa Award in New York for his book The Battle of the Bogside. The prize, named after the famous Life photographer, was awarded each year for “superlative still photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad”. Limpkin’s book contained 150 pictures of the fighting in Northern Ireland over a three year period.

More than 30 journalists at the Glasgow Herald signed a statement protesting to editor Alistair Warren after the paper carried an advert promoting South Africa as an investment opportunity. The protest followed disclosures in The Guardian about poor wages paid to black workers in South Africa. Warren said he could not subscribe to the view that if the paper were to ban South African advertising it would do anything to help matters there.

Echo: Top title

Top-selling regional morning paper was The Northern Echo with an ABC of 109,452. It had just announced a price cut – from 3.5p to 3p. Sales of the Echo compared to 108,973 for the Yorkshire Post and 100,387 to the Liverpool Daily Post.

Blott in the Times

Not for the last time, relations between the press and Thames Valley Police were strained. The police were accused of a shutdown on information after Chief Constable David Holdsworth issued a directive to senior officers to withhold information on burglaries on the grounds that publicity encouraged crime.

Daily and weekly editors, their papers and local NUJ branches reacted strongly to the chief constable’s move. Eric Blott, deputy general secretary of the NUJ, in a letter to The Times, asked: “If one chief constable can stop the flow of information on burglaries, what is to stop another saying he believes stories about muggings incite the commission of other offences and proposes to withhold information about them?”

Absence always noted

Chapman Pincher, described as “the reporter whose absence from the splash of the Daily Express makes you think he is ill”, was elected to the title’s board.

Bubbly celebration

Champagne popped all over the newsroom at the Evening News to celebrate Caren Meyer being named campaigning journalist of the year in the National Press Awards. She won the award for an investigation into one of the largest property companies in the country. Also featured on the front page was Harold Evans who was named journalist of the year for a series of investigations by The Sunday Times.

Uproar over harsh sentence

Journalists and press freedom campaigners were shocked at the severe sentence of two years with hard labour imposed on Rhodesian journalist Peter Niesewand, a correspondent for the BBC and The Guardian, convicted after a secret trial of an undisclosed contravention of the Rhodesian Official Secrets Act.

A May day without papers

It was announced that no national papers were to be published on 1 May – the day of an official TUC protest. The Newspaper Publishers Association said: “The repeated interference with the production of national newspapers for political purposes is damaging to the long-term interests of union members.”

Ludlow resigns

Robin Ludlow, the Queen’s press secretary, resigned after 15 months after a “difference of opinion”. Ludlow, former Economist marketing manager, was believed to have clashed with the Establishment as he tried to update the royal image. He was to be succeeded by the BBC’s court correspondent, Ronald Allison.